Marketing Must Dos for Venues in 2017

06 Jan Marketing Must Dos for Venues in 2017

Marketing is ever changing, not just the approaches and systems but the way and places media is consumed. Every year there’s a list of new marketing trends for every channel. As a multi-channel venue marketing agency, providing everything from single channel management to a fully outsourced marketing department, we’ve put together our top multi-channel must dos for venue marketing in 2017.

The venue marketing must dos

Pursue website conversions, not traffic. Forget broad keywords that attract 1000 website visitors a month with a 99% bounce rate. Start aiming for better qualified and better converting web traffic. Don’t be alarmed if you have fewer website visitors than last year, be alarmed if you have fewer conversions.

Make your social media more interactive. Images, videos, gifs, memes, Facebook live. Increasingly what works in B2C marketing is working in B2B. In 2016 we increased social engagement significantly for our venue clients by introducing gifs to their posts that promoted their content.

Don’t just look for advertising positions, look for community campaigns. More and more media outlets are offering integrated multi-channel campaigns across all of their contact channels as a way to ensure your message meets their subscribers. Hirespace are one of the leaders in this but they’re not alone.

Get your data compliant for the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (EUGDPR). We’re in the grace period until May 2018. Make sure you become EUGDPR compliant before they start issuing fines.

Start segmented marketing. Not enough venues are doing this. As a minimum you need a retention marketing programme, a win-back programme (for lost clients) and an acquisition programme (for new clients). Venue marketing needs to be more strategically focussed than new business.

Disavow all of your historic toxic backlinks. This should’ve been done last year but if you haven’t done this already do it now. Following Google’s latest Penguin 4 update they have been heavily penalising websites that are carrying large amounts of historic backlinks. If your search rankings have decreased lately this could be the reason.

Go where no one else is going. Statistics on direct mail demonstrate it’s more effective than ever. Why? Not many people are doing it and the market is still there.

Buy as much third party opt in data as you can and try and get it to opt in to your communications. The EUGDPR is going to totally re-shape the data landscape and make it difficult to grow your market share by buying third party opt in data. If you use this approach fill your boots, while you can.

Unify your messaging. Too often we see venues without a unified message across their channels instead preferring to run distinct campaigns in isolation from one another. A cohesive top level message will ensure your brand is stronger than ever in 2017.

Get on top of your mobile game. This is something that should have happened in 2016 but a lot of venues are still struggling when it comes to providing a compelling mobile offering. More and more people are browsing on mobile devices and Google shows preference to mobile friendly sites over non-mobile friendly ones. It’s time to get on top of this before your website falls off.

Post on social media out of office hours. The lines between ‘personal social media use’ and ‘professional social media use’ are becoming increasingly blurry. Your market is likely to be on social networks out of office hours but your competition aren’t.

Understand what your different audiences want. A website can’t be a ‘one-size fits all’ solution for a venue, it’s your shop front that attracts radically different clients. An organiser looking to host a major conference isn’t going to interact with your content in the same way as a bride planning her wedding day. Understand the way your different audiences digest and interact with your content and work towards delivering more of what they need.

Make sure you’re using expanded text ads on the Google Search Network. As of 31st January users will no longer be able to create or edit the old standard text ads. There’s no time like the present to get on board with the new format.

At Patch Media we look after marketing activity for venues and suppliers to the events industry. We cover everything from strategy creation, to providing an entirely outsourced marketing team, to managing a single channel. We become an extension of our clients’ teams and aim to save them time and money on their marketing activity. We can also provide technical skills which may not be available in-house. If you’d like to discuss anything about your media planning or marketing activity, or any of the tips above, don’t hesitate to contact us.